HP Chromebox G2 - A Viable Desktop Alternative

Chromebook laptops have been around for several years now - available from HP, Dell, Asus, Acer and Samsung these often entry level laptops running Google's ChromeOS offer an alternative to traditional MS and Apple devices.

 For many use cases - they can offer a user effectively "everything they need" in an extremely light and maintenance free OS where all services are on-line.  

 From the Chrome browser and add-ons, Google Office, Drive, You Tube, Mail, Calendar, Maps, Play Music & Movies are all available.  Add to that 3rd party apps like Spotify, Instagram, Netflix, Lightroom, EverNote and others and for many folks it a really great alternative to a Windows PC or Mac.

 Goggle themselves recently updated their Pixelbook which while seemingly pricey with a starting price @ $1000 actually offers an excellent experience.  

 As so while a great laptop solution, if you wanted to go Desktop and use a big monitor and traditional keyboard/mouse - your choices suddenly got very limited.  There was a niche called ChromeBox/Bit - but the early versions introduced back in 2014/2015 where pretty limited.

 That has all changed....

 HP recently announced the Chromebox G2.  This Intel NUC sized device is available in 3 CPU configurations - Celeron 3865U , Core I5-7300U and Core I7-8650U and changes the game.
The units come with a 3.5mm headphone jack, 1 x USB Type-C, 3 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, RJ-45 Ethernet and an SD Slot.  They support 16GB of RAM and have 32 or 64GB M.2 SSD.  While not called out in any of the public specs I assume there is an Intel 8260 or 8265 802.11ac Wifi/BT there as well.  At least I hope so...

 Pricing was not announced and HP states these will be available in April - but the i5 unit with Intel 620 graphics really looks like the sweet spot.  I have an Intel NUC with a i5-7550U and 640 graphics and it's great.  

 While you could go ahead and buy a NUC, then load ChromiumOS (the Google Open developer version of ChromeOS) and then upgrade - the fact that you can effectively buy a complete ready to go unit from a Tier 1 OEM like HP is great.

 I for one am going to take a serious look at one of these come April.  Now sure you have to prepared to run inside the ChromeOS world - but when I look at what I run and the potential for running Android apps as well - I can see using this is a heart beat.  

 Even for diehard MS fans - you can easily run all the O365 online apps and even support VDI via Plugs-ins to Chrome.  And when compared to the current hot mess that Windows 10 is - I'd love a device that is effectively maintenance free,  boots in seconds and just works.

 Nice work HP...





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